Isamu Amada
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
In September 1946, Isamu Amada founded Amada Seisakusho as a sole proprietorship in Takada-minamicho, Toshima Ward, Tokyo. The business capital he withdrew from the post office came to ¥3,000, and the operation consisted of one lathe and himself: a small workshop taking on machine repairs. It became a limited partnership in 1948 and was reorganized in October 1953 as Amada Seisakusho Co., Ltd. with capital of ¥1 million. Learning that the occupation forces used band saws to cut metal, he set out to make them domestically; unable to afford an imported machine for study, he designed one using only foreign catalogs and patent documents. In January 1955, the first vertical band saw, the "Contour Machine," was completed.
Selection
He was the first president and had no predecessor. In February 1961, Isamu Amada answered a factory-attraction offer from the town of Isehara in Kanagawa Prefecture, acquired about 33,000 square meters, and began a new plant requiring roughly ¥350 million. Capital at the time was ¥8 million; after doubling it to ¥16 million in a March capital increase and raising it to ¥50 million in May, the company listed its shares on the Tokyo over-the-counter market on June 15. That same month it merged with Suzukawa Kogyo to change the par value of its shares, and in October it listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The listing came 15 years after the founding.
Initiatives
In February 1964 the company absorbed AM Shoji, the sales arm spun off in April 1960, and from January 1965 it seriously began building a direct sales network that bypassed distributors. The reasoning was that paying customers' travel and lodging to visit was cheaper than the 15-20% margin paid to distributors. When orders outstripped capacity, he chose to acquire existing manufacturers rather than build new plants, bringing struggling competitors into the group starting with Sonoike Seisakusho in November 1973 and allocating production by machine type. Net sales grew from ¥4.1 billion in the fiscal year ended March 1967 to ¥100.5 billion in the fiscal year ended March 1982.
Career
Career
Amada
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| 1961 | President |
| 1983 | Stepped down as President |
References 4
References (Japanese primary sources)
- アマダ 有価証券報告書（2025年3月期）【沿革】
- 天田勇『無借金経営の勝利：危機突破のアマダ企業戦略』（山手書房, 1982年7月）
- 商工経済（1963年3月）
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年（経済春秋社編, 1968）